Clive Palmer unplugged in unexpected call

Clive Palmer yesterday mistakenly called our journalist. But he stayed on the line for a nice chat.

Clive Palmer on the line. Picture: Ray Strange

“Hello?’’ boomed the distinctive voice of Clive Palmer on my ­mobile telephone yesterday.

From an office somewhere in Queensland, the federal member for Fairfax had mistakenly called me, perhaps his least favourite journalist, at a newspaper he has ­routinely derided.

It was a misdial; he had been trying to call someone else. Maybe we were on his mind, subconsciously, at 1.55pm. But now we were on loud-speaker.

What could possibly go wrong? After all, our investigations and reports since June 2013 have merely suggested he has been a tax cheat, fraudster, bully, bogus professor, fake billionaire, fibber extraordinaire, dud businessman, grandstanding spiv, vexatious litigant, threat to free speech, and much more besides. All of which he has, of course, strenuously denied.

He has merely issued media releases, and used live radio and TV interviews, to repeatedly describe me as a fiction writer, ­deluded fantasist, lap-dog to China, conspirator in a Beijing-led plot to strip his assets, and ­Rupert Murdoch’s attack-dog.

He says the News Corp founder instructs me from New York, by Skype. And he has sued me and The Australian for defamation in Queensland’s Supreme Court. Apart from that, we’re all good.

“Clive! It’s me, Hedley.”

I waited for the call to terminate. Instead, he began to talk. And talk. After 30 minutes, he hung up, then got in his car and called again to natter for another 70 minutes. Happily, he assured me, he does, in fact, love The Australian, admires its founder, Rupert, and particularly enjoys the stories about him under my byline.

I didn’t press him on the wacky “Wendi Deng is a Chinese spy” stuff, as Jerry Hall has ­replaced her, anyway (and no one has suggested she bothers with espionage).

“I do like your articles because they’re very creative,’’ he told me. You could have written fiction better than anyone else I know, because you write it in a way that makes it almost believable,’’ he told me. “But you seem a little bit frustrated as a journalist whereas if you were a fiction writer you would feel fulfilled.”

I don’t know if he was playing to his audience, but he did share that he was underwhelmed by the ABC’s tough Four Corners report: “It was a rehash of a lot of things, it was not really hard journalism.”

He admitted he was a frustrated journalist. “It is what I should have done; you can see the world, make a difference, kidnap children in Lebanon — it’s wonderful,’’ he said.

I asked him if he ­believed he would be imprisoned. “All of that’s just fantasy,’’ he said.

By the end of the call, he was issuing invitations to me and Sky’s Paul Murray for golf and lunch at his Coolum resort, which was shut down a year ago with 600 lost jobs.

With that, he confessed he needed a drink. “God bless you, goodbye,’’ he said.